Shelter
by sugarkid
Summary: A prequel to Violets Are Blue:- The party is here and MC has last minute doubts about Jumin's true feelings for her, which are ultimately put to rest in the bedroom.
1. Chapter 1

**This Fic is the prequel to my other fic Violets are Blue. You can find me on tumblr: fromthedeskofelizabeththird**

* * *

Nari was sure that she would never forget her first RFA party. She had fastened her dress with shaking hands and almost thrown up at the sight of the venue. Given everything that she and the others had been through leading up to that point, she knew that it was somewhat ridiculous to feel so anxious, and yet there she was with clammy hands.

It seemed that she spent the night moving from one camera to another. She would finish smiling for one picture only for a different member of the press to step forward and call for her attentions.

 _Mrs Han!_ They called, lifting their cameras the second she turned her head.

 _Mrs Han!_ They called, before asking what colour her dress was going to be.

She considered at the time, smiling to each and every camera lens, that she loved Jumin dearly but if one...more...person-

"Mrs Han!"

Seven had been quiet for much of the party thus far, but he cackled at her expression as he lowered his phone camera.

"Not you too !" she cried out.

"Do you have any idea how much these pictures are worth?" he asked, turning his phone so that she could see. Nari remembered every pixel in excruciating detail: her wide-eyed expression and ever so slightly shiny face.

She was too busy pretending she knew what she was doing to admit that she felt like a deer caught in the headlights of some poor stranger's car. And so she faked confidence. Laughed at the picture as if it delighted her and mentally searched the room for Jumin as if he were a piece of driftwood in maelstrom.

 _Where is he ?_ She thought, accepting a glass of wine from the nearest member of the waiting staff. _He can't have gone far ._

As it turned out, she need not have worried. He stood amid the largest group of reporters, explaining what his impending engagement meant for the future of C&R. Nari sipped at her wine, watching his relaxed pose and rehearsed answers and found herself a combination of jealous and intrigued. Was she ever going to be as comfortable in front of a camera as he was?

As the press all but tripped over one another to ask another question, an older gentleman crossed the party hall and stood beside her, sighing as he slipped his cell phone into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Two lapses of judgement occurred that evening.

There were no photographs on the walls of Jumin's apartment: a fact Nari had never before considered. As an unfortunate consequence, however, she did not recognise Chief Han even as he stood beside her, having spent the best part of half an hour on the phone to his legal team decrying Glam Choi. Furthermore, in the chaos of multiple revelations happening at once, he did not recognise his future daughter in law. Even considering his current circumstances, Chief Han had a weakness for beautiful women and Nari was nothing if eager to please.

"Pardon me, but I don't believe we've met," said Chief Han, reaching for her hand.

Much of Nari's communication with guests at the party was via e-mail and so naturally she did not know anyone's faces. She reached for a handshake enthusiastically, only to receive a kiss to the knuckles.

"I…"

It would be rude to express discomfort, she told herself, glancing over at Jumin's interview, which carried on in full swing.

"It's my first party," she grinned. "I'm a little nervous, if I'm honest."

"You hide it well, my dear," said Chief Han, lowering her hand with a less than discreet brush of the thumb across her ring finger. "Are you here with anyone?"

"I'm waiting for my fiancé."

"Ah, that's a shame," said Chief Han. "I would love to take you for dinner."

"Oh," she said, "I-"

Fortunately, Jumin's interview ended at that very moment and the conversation ended there, for he approached their location with every member of the press in hot pursuit.

"Oh," he glanced from Nari to Chief Han. "You're together, good. We should pose for a family photograph."

" Family photograph?" said Chief Han.

" Together ?" said Nari.

Nari never forgot the resulting picture; she and Chief Han smiled falsely to hide their embarrassment, all while Jumin's face was completely unreadable.

"We need to talk," he said the moment the photographers were satisfied, leading her away into the crowd without a further word to his father. All in all, it left her wondering if she had done something terribly wrong.

"I...Jumin," she said, wondering if she should have done further research on the company.

Should she have recognised Chief Han on sight? Had Jumin expected her to? Suddenly her hands were clammy all over again and she tightened her grip as they crossed the party hall. If his hand slipped from hers, she was half convinced she would fall right through the floor.

Up until recently, she had valued herself on her independence. She never presumed to say so out loud, but deep down she laughed at the overreliance of her friends on their significant others. She had always been a free spirit, with few things in life she honestly could not live without, so it was an uncomfortable development to arrive in Jumin's penthouse and be confronted with genuine, unyielding desire.

For the first time in her life, she had felt awkward; navigating the uncharted waters of her own complicated feelings with the sole consolation that Jumin was easily as confused (if not more so) than she was. She had not expected to care so much about him and it was something of an inconvenience that she did. She told herself repeatedly and often that he just happened to be the person she connected with the most on the messenger and, after the party, her life would go back to normal. The longer she stayed with him, though, it became less of a promise and more of a warning.

After the party, the spell would be broken and no one would remember her name. She, who had waited on Jumin's every word, remembered how often he alluded to 'give and take'. To charming rich women into handing over their signatures. It had not escaped her attentions that perhaps he meant to use her too; after the party, the RFA had no need for her.

In her dreams, she wandered the dance hall long after everyone had left; a ghost with cold lips and lonely eyes that everyone remembered but nobody missed. Wasn't that what became of free spirits in the end?

He guided her away from the dance floor and through the back door he entered upon his arrival. It led out into the areas ordinarily reserved for employees, such as the kitchen, the staff room, a number of offices and the back door to the building.

It occurred to her even as she saw the door in sight how immeasurably composed she was. Truthfully, she had held herself together remarkably well only the previous night too. She left the penthouse with V, feeling confident that it was the right thing to do, only to find herself confronted by the emptiness of Rika's apartment. It did not matter how many of the doors she peered through or corners she examined; she was not going to find Jumin choosing a book to read to her or neatly arranging the pancakes he had made for her.

It seemed far too easy to say that she missed him. Her feelings were far more complicated than words alone would allow. Everywhere she looked served as a reminder he was not there. The empty bed; the wardrobe full of Rika's clothes; the way she folded her dirty clothes in much the same manner that she had for his maid.

She did not not want to spend the rest of her life apart from him, but she did not know how to say so. She gripped his hand, wanting to tell him that when he called her the night before, she had hung up the phone and dissolved into tears, feeling the weight of his absence like a dozen pillars of stone.

He led her into one of the offices and closed the door behind him, leaning back against it with the full weight of his body.

"Thank goodness for that," he said. "I thought we were never going to escape."

"Jumin," she said, "what…"

If this was to be the moment he declared it all a trick, she wanted to be ready to hold her head high as if the illusion was hers all along. She refused to give him the satisfaction of accepting the blame for a bruise to her heart.

But in the end, he reached to embrace her and she crumbled into his arms, all of her previous resolution forgotten. She knew that she should have been angry with herself, but found she couldn't bring herself to. It was safe there in his arms.

He reached up to cradle her face, leaning his forehead into hers.

"I've missed you," he said and Nari wondered how she had managed to so utterly convince herself of the worst. Once, not long ago, she might have laughed at exactly that sort of paranoid behaviour.

How strange .

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, taking in the feel of his dinner jacket and the softness of his hair.

No , she thought, taking in the way he closed his eyes at her touch, not strange.

She had had nothing to lose before. Now she had everything.

The office was small; built to store keys and staff uniforms. Jumin smiled and took hold of her shoulders, pushing her two steps back and into the nearest wall.

"Let me look at you," he said, as if he meant to hold her at a distance. Nari lowered her arms from his shoulders and linked them around his waist, wanting him closer than he could ever be while clothed.

She had forgotten Chief Han. Forgotten the press. Forgotten everything but the taste of dry wine on his lips and warmth of his body.

"You look beautiful," he said, his forehead touching hers as he leaned in for a kiss. "V is going to be quite cross with me."

"V?"

"He told me not to leave the dance hall," said Jumin. "If I did, he said that he might never get another chance to talk to me...which is awfully melodramatic, even for him."

Nari could not help but giggle at that.

"I think he knows you better than you know yourself."

Jumin sighed.

"It is true that now we are away from the party, I'm not sure I want to go back. You are," he chuckled and squeezed her closer, "so pure. You bring out the worst of my greed. I can't stand the thought of sharing you with a room of strangers, not when I want you all for myself."

His gaze dropped to the floor. She stroked his jawline.

"Anywhere you go," she said. "I'll follow."

Wherever he went, she was home.


	2. Chapter 2

They shared just one dance that evening and it lingered on her senses even after they left the hall. As dances went, it was almost entirely innocent and Nari barely knew the steps, but she was not naive enough to remain unswayed by the warmth of his lips across her knuckles where she wanted him to kiss her lips.

It occurred to her, as Jumin's hands ghosted hers, that she wanted to dance with him where there was nobody else to see. Nobody to watch her indelicate footwork; nobody to see the way her eyes softened at the sight of him. She wanted to dance with him alone and naked, where there was no one but her beloved to follow her steps.

Even as she nodded to Driver Kim and took a seat in the back of his car, the violins played on in her soul. It was an interlude and nothing more, she told herself. Before long she would be in Jumin's arms again to dance from dusk until dawn.

* * *

It started to rain as they rode back to the penthouse, so lightly at first that Nari did not notice until her window was largely obscured by rainwater. By the time they reached the penthouse itself and kicked off their shoes, it had progressed to an outright storm.

"I hope that everyone got home alright," said Nari, standing by one of Jumin's enormous windows to watch the movement of the raindrops on the glass. "Didn't V say that he and Seven were going for a drink somewhere?"

"I'm sure wherever they are, it's somewhere warm," said Jumin, as he wrapped an arm around her middle and leaned over to kiss her temple.

Nari remembered that only the day before, he had told her he wanted to see her lips bathed in cherry red and she had painted them accordingly, with a gaudy lipstick that would smear them both completely. The same lipstick that decorated her lips most immaculately as she walked into Rika's empty apartment, which remained unchanged in all of the chaos.

After his last phone call the night before-after she finished crying- she had taken a shower wearing nothing but the lipstick; a flush of bright red that she would catch in the corner of her eyes every time she turned her head. She was not a virgin and had not been for quite some time, though the parallel was an easy one to make as she smudged her fingers over her lips in curiosity, before snaking them down to the slickness between her thighs.

Jumin had told her he wanted her lips to be cherry red, only to kiss her hand in the end, leaving her lips untouched. That night before, as she leaned into the shower wall and traced the edges of her fingers around her folds, she spent longer than she would have liked thinking of the kisses she had yet to receive and the chasteness that was not hers by choice.

As she watched the rainwater, she remembered the feel of the shower water burning against her exposed skin and the orgasms that had left her quivering until the early hours of the morning. She had only imagined the feel of his lips then, but now, standing before him in the soft light of his penthouse, she was almost lightheaded at the knowledge that the arm around her waist was quite real.

"Would you say you approve of the night's events?" He said, lowering the arm around her waist and reaching for her hand.

"I think so."

"Oh. Not a solid yes, then. Is there something I can do?"

He was beautiful in that moment and Nari was almost tempted to tell him to stand there forever, where he was close enough to touch. She wanted to remember every detail of him: the warming amber cologne Chief Han gave him for Christmas one previous year and he had worn out of politeness ever since; the shampoo he used by default without looking at the bottle. He had raised an eyebrow when she told him it smelled of blue. She wanted to remember the exact colour of his eyes and the way that his hands fitted so perfectly around hers. She wanted all of him, even the parts of him she did not know.

"Kiss me," she said.

He had never been able to refuse her at the best of times and as reprises went it was perfect: a second dance in a room illuminated by the lights of the city below. Jumin took the lead with a soft kiss, peeling his jacket from her shoulders as he walked her backwards into the hallway.

"Have I mentioned how excellent you look in that dress?" He said, laying the jacket over a nearby chair.

"I could stand to hear it again."

"Good," said Jumin, smiling into the next kiss. "A lady should be reminded every day."

Nari gasped as between them they misjudged their surroundings and crashed into the wall with enough force to disturb the painting beside her: a minimalist print by a European painter that Chief Han picked up some years ago as a housewarming gift. The first time she saw it, Nari thought it depicted a bowl of noodles and the next she wondered if it was actually a shell.

A few days earlier, that same painting had scraped her shoulder blades as she shrank back into the wall and away from Jumin. He had been afraid that she might leave him and demanded to know the reason for her strange behaviour.

"Why can't you act logically?" He had asked. "Why do you want to escape from me?"

They had both been confused that day. She knew she ought to have been afraid of him, but he had never before seemed so vulnerable. She knew that running away from him made sense and if she were to act as logically as he had asked, then she would close the door behind her and never turn back, but he was not the only one out of their element. At the heart of it, he had not wanted her to think logically and she had not wanted to escape.

From the looks of things, the memory of that previous night had not escaped him either. One look at her standing there and his gaze dropped to the floor in silent shame as if he had yet to apologise for his behaviour.

She reached up to stroke a hand across his face and smiled as he leaned his head into her touch, his eyes closed until she lowered her hand from his face and smoothed it down over his chest.

"I know it's not like me to say so," he said, leaning over and resting his forehead against hers. "But last night all I could think about was how I would welcome you home."

"You did?" Nari smirked, fingers making light work of his shirt buttons. "Tell me more."

"You would have me," Jumin's tone was one of mock offense as he shrugged off his shirt, "break my rules?"

She nodded.

"You're not breaking anything," she said wrapping her arms around his exposed waist, "if I'm going to be Mrs Han."

"An excellent point," he said. "You never fail to surprise me."

"If nothing else, I aim to please."

* * *

It occurred to Nari as she stepped inside of Jumin's bedroom that in the vast percentage of ordinary relationships, young lovers did not know the layout of their future partner's bedroom, nor the feel of their sheets. If their relationship was anything, though, it wasn't ordinary; a fact that brought a smile to her face as Jumin stood two steps behind her.

She gasped as he brushed aside her hair to kiss the crook of her neck, his hands moving around her back to loosen the fastenings of her dress. She closed her eyes and leaned into his bare chest as her gown fell to her ankles, feeling exposed and wanting nothing quite so much as for him to touch her.

"Come here," said Jumin, taking her hand and turning her to face him. "Let me look at you, Mrs Han ."

She had only been fully naked in front of one other man and she did not remember the strange nervousness at the pit of her stomach, but she knew this was different. Every time Jumin picked up a dress for her, she wondered if he had imagined her naked. She had certainly imagined him in a state of undress and she did not have the excuse of measurements to consider.

"Well?" She said.

"Perfection," he said as she curtseyed and stepped back towards the bed in her underwear.

He did not follow her immediately. At first he merely watched as she sat down on the edge of the bed and motioned for him to come closer. Then, he took two slow steps towards her and smoothed his fingers through her hair as she unfastened his belt and allowed the leather to fall to the floor.

Since their return to the penthouse, he had gotten incredibly hard for her; a fact she might never have guessed from his gentle touches. By then, she would have expected most men to be erratic; especially when in such close proximity to a semi naked woman. Jumin, however, gave off no hints of his present state, even as she moved to unfasten the zip of his trousers and he went on to kick them off the rest of the way himself.

For all of his previous confidence, the moment he stood before her in nothing more than his underwear, he could not look her in the face.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

"I...uh…" He was not normally bashful and both of them knew it. He took a deep breath as he looked at her.

"You don't have to worry about me," he said. "You are here and that is all that matters."

He leaned the full weight of his body into her at that, leaving her to loop her arms around his shoulders as they lowered themselves onto the bed. She took the opportunity to roll over onto her side and used her advantage to straddle his waist, taking in the delicious sight of her lover blinking up at her.

" Mrs Han ," he said, smirking as she leaned over for kisses, "I had no idea you were such a strategist…"

"Oh? Not to your liking?"

"I never said that," he said, his teeth scraping her bottom lip.

Nari sat up straight and licked over the spot where he could see. He seemed to approve, for he reached out for her thighs and stroked his fingertips against her naked skin.

"And these?" She said, unfastening her bra and dropping it over the side of the bed. "Are these to your liking too?"

Jumin laughed at that and bucked his hips so that she fell forward into his arms.

"If I were a different sort of man," he said, running his hands across her breasts, "I would have you model silks for our company in marketing across the globe. As it is, I am not That sort of person...but I see no reason why you should not model them for me."

"I...I...can arrange that," she said, whimpering as he took her nipple into his mouth, gliding his tongue around her nipple before moving onto the next.

"Mmmm...I'm thinking...a negligee of Parisian lace," he said, his breath warm against her chest. "Perhaps ivory with black finishings...or black with ivory finishings…Perhaps both."

Underwear was possibly the last thing on her mind. Her attentions were on his lips, his fingers...everywhere that he touched her and and everywhere that he did not. She wanted him to be as desperate for attention as she was; wanted him to lean into her lips as she did his.

"What are you doing?" He asked, stroking her hair.

"Treasure map," she said as she kissed his chest, right beside one of the moles that littered his body. "I want to see where they lead."

He chuckled at that: cocky. Overconfident. Good.

"Fair enough, bu-"

He wasn't quite prepared for the moment her lips skimmed his belly button. She was, though, and kissed around it once, twice and three times, knowing for a fact how ticklish he was there.

She caught his gaze and slipped her fingers under his waistband, reaching for his hard length and earning a groan of pleasure when she wrapped her hand around it and began to caress. The moment she ran one finger along the shaft, he let out a gasp of his own and wriggled free of his underwear to give her better access to his cock.

"Now then," he said, breaths haggard and eyes glazed over with lust, though still with the faintest of blushes across his cheeks, "is that to your liking?"

"Oh, yes," she said, running her fingers along his cock and smiling at how it left him unable to concentrate every time. "Would you like me to pay my respects with my hands or my tongue?"

If he was blushing before, he certainly was then.

"I...neither, that's not necessary," he said, sitting up and peppering her lips with soft kisses. "Tonight is about you, princess, after all."

"It is?"

"You're the newest member of the RFA," said Jumin. "You're the girl who planned the party."

He laughed drily.

"You're Mrs Han."

"I suppose I am," she said. "But...are you sure? If it's going to make you feel good, I don't-"

"Your pleasure is my pleasure," said Jumin, kissing her forehead and lowering her onto her back. "And I do not like the idea of ruining something so pure as yourself with something so depraved."

"Oh," she said, somewhat curious about his reaction, though not questioning him any further.

It had seemed so unreal when he mentioned it on the phone before; the idea of the two of them rolling around on a bed of any description. She was still not quite sure she believed it was happening as he eased off her underwear and parted her legs, much less when he ran his hands over the insides of her thighs so softly that she quivered.

"This is...what you want, my love?" He asked and for a moment she was confused. She thought she had been obvious in her want for him.

When she realised, however, that the question was one of consent more than it was desire, she could scarcely hide her expression of surprise. It was the sort of respect she had heard of only in stories and never thought to experience in real life.

"Yes," she said. "This is what I want."

"Excellent," said Jumin and he redistributed his weight across the bed to rifle through the drawer beside her.

Nari was not in the proper position to see if the box was new. Despite the fact that he had told her almost every day that she could, she had never gone through any of the drawers in his apartment and as a result she did not know if he had had condoms in his possession all along or if he had gotten hold of some specifically. Either scenario was interesting in its own way and she watched as he put it on.

"I've been thinking about this moment ever since we met," he said, licking his index finger and thumb and reaching down to stroke her opening.

She squirmed, bucking her hips into his touches, all of the while whining for more. His hands...his fingers...they were not enough anymore. She wanted all of him and he seemed to understand her struggle. He wrapped one hand around the base of his cock and the other around her leg to enter her slowly, waiting for any sound of discomfort to stop entirely.

His first thrusts were slow and shallow; she wrapped her legs around his waist to deepen them, her heart fluttering as he touched his forehead to hers, gazing straight into her eyes as he went deeper...harder. He moaned into her every kiss so sweetly that it only served to drive her closer to ecstasy and she rested her hands on his shoulders and the small of his back, her body squeezed so tightly into his that she could no longer distinguish where he ended and she began.

Nari was close. That strange nervousness in the pit of her stomach had changed into a different sensation entirely. Something familiar and far more urgent.

Jumin's thrusts were becoming erratic; he held the bed frame with a steel grip all while she moaned incoherently from below, her eyes squeezed shut on the instances they left his face.

"J-Jumin," said Nari, clinging to his waist, "Jumin don't sto-"

In the end, they came only fractions apart; Jumin gasping into the crook of her neck as she saw stars, caught in the free fall of an orgasm. They clutched at the bed sheets and each other, moaning so loudly in the heat of the moment that she was somewhat grateful they didn't have neighbours.

The minutes that followed were ones of shy silence. They remained bound even as Jumin laid his head on her chest and gazed up at her with an affectionate smile.

She didn't want the afterglow to end. She wanted to keep him cradled there in her arms forever, the pair of them bound body and soul.

She remembered the face of the guard who announced her as Miss Nari of the RFA that first time she walked into his penthouse. She would almost certainly never forget the way Jumin stood with his back to her and turned so slowly that for an instant she considered running in the opposite direction.

It was one thing to talk to him on the messenger, but another to actually see him in person. On the messenger, she could not see the way he held himself high, with rigid posture. On the messenger he had not reached for her hand automatically, nor had he looked into her face with a warm smile to pay lip service to her eyes.

In her wildest dreams, she would never have imagined that same man would all but throw himself at her feet for fear that she might leave him behind. It was clear to her now that the party was over and everything was said and done that as far as she was concerned, he was her home and she was his; a fact that had not been nearly so cut and dry at the time. He could have been a poor man; he could have had nothing and he would still have been her shelter from the storm.

* * *

It was with a great deal of reluctance that he eventually unsheathed himself from her and crawled up the bed to lay beside her.

"Are you cold?" He asked, stroking her hair. "You're shivering."

"I'm not cold," she said. "I'm just happy."

Her confession made him smile, but it dissolved into an expression of pure seriousness the moment she trembled again.

"Perhaps I should run a bath," he continued. "We can have a glass of wine."

"That's really not...wait... we?"

"You catch on quickly," he said, sitting up. "I'm sure I have some rose petals in there somewhere…"

Nari watched his naked self leave the bed and disappear into the bathroom, thinking out loud about what wine he wanted. She couldn't help but smile, knowing that so much had changed between them in the past few hours and yet so little. Accurate, the more that she thought about it, for Jumin's bedroom looked almost exactly the same, with the exception of their abandoned clothes.

As Jumin switched on the tap in the bathroom, she caught her reflection in the mirror opposite and rather wished she had not. She had spent so long doing her makeup and hair for the party, unsure if any of her personal makeup would accomplish the kind of look that would suit the expensive dress Jumin wanted her to wear. She didn't think she had done too badly and she had to laugh at how she looked in that moment. Her reflection in the mirror opposite was a mess of sweat and smudged makeup, with purple bruises across her neck and collarbones. She had never looked so disheveled before and yet, somewhat strangely, felt almost proud of the achievement.

She was still giggling about it when Jumin's cell phone began to ring on the dresser.

"That's probably my father," he said, popping his head around the door, "can you take a look for me?"

"Okay," she said rolling over onto her front to reach for the phone. The name on the caller display, however, was not Chief Han's.

"It's V," she said.

Jumin switched off the bath water before coming to take the phone.

"V?" He said, lifting the phone to his ear. "What is it? Hello?"

For several minutes he stood there, the phone to his ear, before shaking his head and ending the call.

"There's no one there," he said. "Perhaps he dialed this number accidentally…."

"Does he do that sort of thing often?"

"If he dialed his phone accidentally more often then it would solve a lot of problems."

Nari glanced across at the clock on Jumin's bedside cabinet, which displayed 2:18 in bright, red lettering.

"Well...I hope he's somewhere warm."

"Me too," said Jumin, sending a text message before setting aside his phone. "With any luck, he didn't get caught in the rain."

He reached out a hand to her with a flourish and a bow.

"Now then, Mrs Han," he said. "Your bath awaits."


End file.
